Saturday, May 28, 2011

Mea Culpa

What's the matter with an em dash or two, you ask?—or so I like to imagine. What's not to like about a sentence that explores in full all the punctuational options—sometimes a dash, sometimes an ellipsis, sometimes a nice semicolon at just the right moment—in order to seem more complex and syntactically interesting, to reach its full potential? Doesn't a dash—if done right—let the writer maintain an elegant, sinewy flow to her sentences?

Nope—or that's my take, anyway. Now, I'm the first to admit—before you Google and shame me with a thousand examples in the comments—that I'm no saint when it comes to the em dash. ...

The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don't you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won't be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that's not yet complete? ...

What I'd argue -- sort of the exception that proves the exception -- is that blogging is a special case. It is -- at least for those of us who feel the need to get stuff out there rapidly -- a continually unfinished product. When I wrote my book -- I'd encourage all humans to purchase it, by the way, and at full price -- I spent a great deal of time working and reworking a sentence -- so much so that eventually I knew the whole damn thing by heart, and my eyes began to run down pages -- I caught myself often -- without absorbing photons.

To some blog posts I devote a fair amount -- by which I mean I delay posting, re-read, edit -- of time and effort. Others -- this being one -- are sort of tossed out there like the pine cones I pick off my lawn and backhand over the bluff. This may not be an excuse -- although I'd hope it was -- but it's an explanation. Or is it the other way around? The main thing is -- and I've thought about it before -- is that me and em are a little too cozy sometimes -- and I admit it.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™